Automated Atmospheric River Detection

Overview

An automated technique has been developed to objectively identify and characterize atmospheric river events in satellite-derived and model-based fields of integrated water vapor (IWV) content. The technique is fundamentally based on criteria for the length, width, and core IWV content of features initially defined by Ralph et al. 2004. While atmospheric river events are fundamentally characterized by their water vapor transport, use of the technique facilitates direct assessment of model based forecasts. A manuscript describing the procedure has been submitted to IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing.